Design Tips for Amateurs Part IV: The Details

If it’s true that the devil is in the details, then smack me and call me Beelzebub. Part four of the “Design Tips for Amateurs” series focuses on the little things that will screw up your marketing piece if you’re not on the lookout. So before you rush that job to the printer, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Are all the words spelled correctly AND do they make sense?

Getting spelling right is a very obvious detail – so elementary that you may say, “Duh. Spell check.” BUT! The problem with spell check is that it is only flagging misspelled words. So if you mess up and type “horse” instead of “house”, spell check would make you none the wiser.

Your piece needs to be read (and re-read) by an actual human. Preferably someone other than the author. As a general rule of thumb, whoever wrote the text will skim over typos and grammatical errors because he or she already knows what it is supposed to say. Someone else will notice if you omitted words or wrote “beautiful landscaping for your horse.”

2. Are my fonts/styles consistent throughout the piece?

This question is especially relevant when you have cut and paste text into your document. It doesn’t look good to have, say Times New Roman, on one panel of a brochure and Garamond on another. Even if you’re using very similar fonts, the untrained eye will still find it to be “off”. It you want to set text apart stylistically, in a side bar for example, go with a different type of text. If your main font is a serif font like Times, use a sans serif font like Arial or Verdana for a change of pace. For more about type, read the first article in this series which gives you a rundown on type basics.

The other consistency you need to watch for is in your stylistic elements. Does just one picture have a border? Well, that doesn’t make sense. Give like elements the same treatment throughout the piece. Give all pictures a border or none. Use a set color palette and be consistent with the shades you use. It’s easy to overlook this kind of thing, so go back and double check that you’re treating all of your elements the same.

And speaking of elements…

3. Are all of your elements lined up?

In college, we spent about half a semester in Design 101 going over the “grid.” If you want to look up the grid concept and polish your design skills, then more power to you. Basically the gist of the grid is that you want every element to correspond to something. Nothing floating in space.

For example, if you have a picture and a block of text side by side, it’s not going to look right if you’re photo is placed half an inch above the top of the text. They need to line up. Whether you know it or not, your publishing program probably has guides that will help you line up the elements on a page. It’s about making your marketing piece look neat. It is, after all, representing you and your company. Don’t be sloppy.

Finally….

4. Is everything in its right place?

If you’re dealing with a document that contains a table of contents, double check that each listing actually corresponds to the appropriate page. If you’re creating a brochure, print out a draft and fold it to ensure that all panels are in the right place when folded. You get the idea.

In closing, it’s quite frustrating to spend a couple of thousand dollars on printing, only to notice a typo or other glaring missed detail. Not to mention it makes you feel like a total bonehead. Take the time to make your piece absolutely flawless in your mind, and ALWAYS get a second opinion.